The End of The World As We Know It

I looked to the North. Nothing. I looked to the East. Again, nothing. I looked to the South. Empty. I looked to the West. No sign of 'em.

I've been looking every day since then, but no sign of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Not even a Don Quixote tilting at windmills. But House Minority Leader John Boehner prophesied that it would be Armageddon if the health care reform bill passed. My cellar is packed with canned goods and gallon jugs of water, duct tape and extra loaded clips for my Glock. But nothing. Only the whistling wind and the occasional tumbleweed rolling by.

Did the Republicans overreact? I mean, if we really were on the eve of Armageddon, the death threats leveled against pro-health-reform Democrats were almost justified. Sarah Palin's PAC facebook page would be responding appropriately by marking the US map with gun sights on the states where she is targeting Democrats for defeat in the upcoming elections.

If it is the end times for anyone, it's so for the Republicans. The Republicans rolled snake eyes. They gambled big, choosing to put their trust in political, Machiavellian maneuverings rather than making a good-faith attempt to influence the final version of the reform bill. They may win the upcoming battles of 2010, unseating a handful of Democrats in weakly-held positions. But they lost the war - the war of ideals, the war of standards, the war of accountability to their constituents.

You can tell by reading past blogs that I have, for the most part, supported health care reform, though with many caveats about the bill that passed. But my philosophy is that it's better to pass a flawed bill - which is, in its worst case scenario, an improvement over the status quo - and then set forth improving the bill piece by piece. The Republicans, had they been true to their calling as statesmen, would have fought like hell to remove provisions they sincerely could not support, and fought even harder to add provisions they believed strongly in that were absent.

Instead, the Republicans chose to stand as one against any meaningful reform, because they were more concerned with breaking Obama's back and chipping away at the Democratic majority in a selfish consolidation of power than they were with providing access to affordable health care without breaking the Treasury. Because of their damn-the-poor, take-care-of-our-own-kind mentality, the Republicans succeeded in allowing the liberal fringe to overload the bill with expensive and ultimately unaffordable provisions.

Will the world end? No. It didn't end when FDR pushed Social Security through Congress, nor did it end when LBJ strong-armed Medicare into being. Heck, the world didn't even end when LBJ shepherded the Civil Rights Act through Congress in 1965, in spite of dire predictions from most of the racist white parents of my friends growing up in Alabama. And it's not going to end today, in spite of Boehner, and Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh (who still hasn't moved to Costa Rica, as he promised).

What I fervently pray is that the world - as they know it - comes to an end for the Republican leadership, who showed their true, elitist, narcissistic stripes in the health care reform battle. Because they only pretend to look out for their constituency (well . . . they actually do take care of their core constituency: the super rich).

If I may dare to be inflammatory, I think the real issue is the the current leadership of the Right (not just the GOP, but the Tea Party and other loosely assembled groups) is motivated by their racism more than they are by any beliefs about health care, or immigration, or jobs. The sad fact that you can turn on Talk Radio at any given time of the day and hear aspersions cast on our President because of his name (Obama) his ethnicity (AFRICAN American) slanderous claims to his Muslim (read RADICAL) beliefs and questions as to his American birthright. People don't deliver death threats over taxation and health policy. People burn crosses, and flags, because of much deeper-seated, much more dangerous, unexamined prejudices.

Leadership that genuinely believes these lies deserves to be unseated. Leadership that cynically plays to these fears is even more deserving of ostracism.